


When Simmons Met Mockingbird

by MsMockingbird



Series: The Mockingverse [11]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Mockingbird (Marvel) - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Other, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5183702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMockingbird/pseuds/MsMockingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers and MI-13 are intent on forging a closer bond between their two agencies.</p><p>When the MI-13 headquarters in London is attacked by unknown force, that bond comes in the form of scientist Jemma Simmons teaming up with Bobbi Morse, the Mockingbird, who just happens to be on site.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. License to Kill

Jemma Simmons looked up and down the empty corridor nervously, then swiped her pass card and ducked into ‘her’ conference room. It was pitch dark inside--the windows were set to total blackout and the lights were off but she knew layout like the back of her hand. She found one of the actually very comfortable chairs and slumped into it with a heavy sigh. 

Director Hunter was going to _kill_ her when he got back from Buckingham Palace. 

“Don’t let Bobbi leave the building Jemma. Find her and...make friends and keep a damn eye on her. She’s skittish as a cat on energy drinks and I don’t have time to find out why,” he’d ordered her.

“Why me?” she asked, desperately. Fearfully, in all truth. She’d only seen the Avenger from across the atrium and had already been intimidated. She was very tall, had muscles like a cage fighter and moved with this weird smooth economy that made Jemma want to look around for a place to hide.

 _Predator_ it screamed. It was vastly un nerving. 

“Because you’re the size of a kitten, you have more in common than you think and she’s actually really kind, Jemma. She’ll want to be nice to you,” Hunter had said, smiling at her. 

“She’ll feel sorry for me you mean,” Simmons had muttered as he left. She was pretty sure he heard her and ignored it.

Everyone felt sorry for her, she knew. She was timid and awkward and odd. Everyone but Fitz, who treated her like an equal.

But she dutifully went looking for the big blond woman...and had been utterly incapable of finding her. Despite the fact that she’d been in the cafeteria on the bottom floor of the new MI13 building, drinking tea, right where the Directors had left her when they got the emergency call from the Palace and there was _only one way out of the room_.

She’d searched _everywhere_ in the building till she’d wound up here, on the top floor and gave up in despair.

“Now what am I going to do? If I’ve lost an Avenger…”

“Oh, we’re like stray cats, we keep coming back.” The voice drifted up from the floor on the other side of the table. It was a woman’s voice, American, quite deep and smooth, with very little accent but more than a little wry good humor. 

Jemma screamed and leapt to her feet, her chair going flying. She promptly fell over herself and banged her elbow on the table on the way down. As she was lying on the carpet hissing in pain the room was flooded with later afternoon sunlight from one side. She looked over to see Mockingbird leaning against one of the still blacked out windows with her arms crossed. She was backlit and Jemma couldn’t make out her expression.

“Ummm, hello,” she ventured tentatively. 

“If I help you up are you going to have a cardiac event? Just idle curiosity,” said that calm, even voice again. 

"You rather surprised me is all,” Jemma said in a grumpy voice. The other woman moved with that ‘nothing wasted’ motion, like a cloud floating across the room, and a remarkably delicate hand was extended. Jemma took it, feeling thin fingers strong as steel cord and a palm that was hard with raised calluses. 

_A stick fighter, right._ she reminded herself.

“Yeah, I am,” said the other woman.

“Oh! Oh dear I didn’t mean to say that aloud! Oh I…” Jemma trailed off rather than die of embarrassment. It was her only other choice. 

“Are you for real? Or is that asshole Lancelot setting me up for something?” the Avenger said as she pulled Jemma to her feet with no visible effort. In fact, it felt like she was stopping herself from throwing the smaller woman across the room with one hand. She was wearing her Avengers tactical gear (navy blue with a white stripe down the centre), complete with that very nice trench coat/duster she had most of the time. She had holsters and pockets and hand guns and batons strapped to various bits of her and looked utterly _lethal_.

“I assure you, I am quite ‘for real’,” Jemma said in the most dignified voice possible, slightly undercutting herself by rubbing at her arm and wincing as she said it. “Um. Lancelot?”

“Yeah, that’s Hunter’s real first name. I’m serious,” Mockingbird said, snorting. “He hates it when you call him that. Try it some time.”

“I think you might have a pass on that sort of thing that I don’t have. I’m just a tech.” 

“I suppose. Less than you might think. He knows who has my number now,” Mockingbird said in a disgruntled voice. “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you it’s just that you said the keyword and I thought it would be worse to eavesdrop on you talking to yourself.”

“Well, yes, um, thank you. I’m Jemma. Jemma Simmons. I’m in Sciences here. Bio-chem actually.”

The blond looked at her with a calculating expression. “Oh, very subtle Hunter, you rat,” she muttered under her breath, then stuck out her hand again. “I’m Mockingbird...Bobbi. You can call me Bobbi, just not in front of the press, okay?”

“Why not?” Simmons asked as they shook hands more formally.

“I’m a professional paranoid ex-black ops wet work undercover specialist, Dr Simmons. I’d rather no one knew my name or had a picture of my face or actually knew that I exist, really.”

“Goodness me, it must be hard to be an Avenger then,” Simmons responded, perhaps more acerbically than she intended.

Bobbi laughed, a high bright sound, infectious. “It has its advantages. Living in the Tower, check. Never worrying about day-to-day chores or money, check. Getting to punch Captain America in the face, super-duper check. The rather scrummy fellow Avenger I married, check plus a billion.”

“Are...are Hawkeye’s arms really as….nice...as they look on the news?” Simmons asked, without thinking about it. “I mean, sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or…”

“His arms are _A-MA-ZING_ ; they end in the _best_ hands. He’s got fingers that go on forever. And you can grate carrots on his abs,” Bobbi said, leaning in with a conspiratorial wink. “I’ll talk about him all day if you let me, according to everyone else on the team. Jealous, the lot of them.”

They shared a smile and Jemma relaxed a little.

“That’s better, you were making me feel like some sort of monster. I swear, I only randomly attack bad people,” Mockingbird said then rather oddly laid down on the floor by the windows, where she must have been when Jemma came into the room.

“Well, you are rather intimidating,” Jemma said apologetically. 

“Am I? I suppose...I never think of myself like that.”

“How can you not? You’re a million feet tall and you move like a ninja and you’re an Avenger who runs about saving the world from monsters and super villains!” 

Mockingbird laughed until she lost her breath, and Jemma joined in this time. “For the record, I’m 5’9” which isn’t even that tall, ninjas are pussies and I can’t argue with the last point. But the defense would like to enter exhibit A into evidence: my day-to-day companions are a literal god, a super-soldier-living-legend who’s so bloody perfect he’s annoying, the greatest marksman who ever lived who can also take on said super soldier hand to hand and win, a dude who turns into a force of nature, two guys who can fly and the only woman I’ve ever met who scares me in a fight. I, um, hit things with sticks.”

“Yes, but you’re _very good at it_ ,” Jemma responded in a firm voice. “Listen, what were you doing in here anyway? And why are you lying on the floor?”

“I’m lying on the floor because my left hip and lower back hurt--I’m coming off an injury from a thing last month that ironically involved actual ninjas, which is how I know they are pussies. They swarm though, like rats; they got lucky in large numbers. For my sins I got shunted to liaison duty. I was in here, frankly, hiding. From Hunter. Looking at the map I calculated this was the room in the building least likely to be used without every other conference or meeting room pre-filled and this place is still half empty.” She held up a hand, forestalling Jemma’s next question. “I’m hiding from Hunter because as I said earlier he has now realized who has my number and I can sense a reactionary appeal to authority coming on over my alleged ‘behavior’.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand any of that,” Jemma said, audibly confused. Well, she understood the bit about the meeting room. It was why she thought of it as ‘hers’, it was lovely and private and a great place to write reports or play video games in peace.

Mockingbird looked over at her, smiling a little. “Hunter’s pissed at me because I’ve been teasing him and Braddock and he’s going to sic Captain America on me for being naughty and I’d rather jam forks into my eyes than listen to Steve read me the riot act about being ‘professional’ and ‘not causing international incidents’. Which I wasn’t even,” she finished petulantly. 

“I think I could listen to Captain America read the Underground schedule,” Jemma said with a blush.

“Oh, he has a lovely voice, I’ll grant that. But by the second time he sighs, and gets that sad puppy face, and starts talking to you in that very calm and even tone about how disappointed he is in you for just having a little fun you’ll be looking around for acid to pour in your own ears.” 

“That was a very specific description.”

“I have vivid memories of each time he’s done it. Painfully vivid.”

“Is he...is Captain America here?” Jemma felt unaccountably weak in the knees at the thought.

Bobbi pulled out a large and clearly custom Starkphone. It had a hard shell case with the Avengers logo on the back,the rest a very dark blue with a white stripe. A few taps and she pulled up a GPS tracking program and showed it to Jemma. A line was drawn on a graphic of the globe from New York to London, arcing over the North Sea; a blinking dot slide down the line towards London as she watched.

“That’s the quinjet winging the Captain, Hawkeye, Falcon and Bruce Banner to our final logistical/admin meeting here tomorrow before we sign the whole ‘mutual aid’ deal between our respective agencies. Or as I like to think of it: my impending doom and end of sexual frustration rolled into one. They should be landing in a few hours. I’ll introduce you to Cap. He’ll like you, he’s got a soft spot for smart British women.”

The resolution of the screen was amazing; Jemma reached out for it in wonder. Mockingbird twitched it away from her hand.

“Nuh-uh. No touch, shocky shocky if you’re not an Avenger. Tony puts all the toys he can’t take to market on our phones and there’s a lot of proprietary info too. Not to mention things like, you know, the quinjet flight path.”

“Oh! Oh, of course. It’s just such a lovely piece of tech--my best friend Fitz would love to take a look at it. He’s the hardware guy in our lab--”

“Hang on, Fitz? Simmons? As in the Fitz and Simmons who wrote that memo three years ago pillorying me for my involvement in Project Gladiator and punching holes in the experimental methodology?” Mockingbird sat up and looked Jemma in the eye, her face expressionless.

Jemma backed away a few steps, her hands coming up nervously. “Pillorying you? Your name wasn’t on that memo anywhere it was mostly about...Paul Allen and Ellen Brandt and Dr Morse. Barbara Morse. Your first name is really Barbara isn’t it?” 

Bobbi nodded solemnly, rising to her feet but staying over by the window.

“Well, I mean, I suppose we were just looking at the data in a vacuum--” Jemma stuttered to a halt, her heart seizing at the grim quiet in the room. She forced herself to stand up straight. “No, actually, that memo was quite accurate. The Project was terribly designed and badly run, no matter who was involved in it. Not to speak of morally and ethically abhorrent.”

The grin that spread across the Avenger’s face was radiant. “Damn straight it was, sport. Good for you for sticking to your guns. I deserve a lot worse for being on that base than a polite scientific dressing down.”

Jemma pressed a hand to her chest to control her thumping heart. “You know, Director Hunter told me you were really rather kind. I’m beginning to think he doesn't know you that well.”

Bobbi’s eyes filled with a combination of amusement and respect. “Sometimes the evil sense of humor overrides the rest of my personality. But only with people I like.” 

“How can you possibly like me? We just met.” Jemma stared Bobbi slightly desperately. She _badly_ wanted the Avenger to like her--she’d wanted that before they met and now it was her heart’s greatest desire--but this seemed awfully quick.

“Eh, I’ve been doing this for a long time, Jemma--can I call you Jemma? Thanks--and you learn to trust your gut. My gut says: nice person, smart, little awkward, tougher than she realises.”

“I’m very awkward,” Jemma said sadly. “I talk too much and too quickly and I look like a mouse and I don’t really know anything about pop culture or music or anything. I like my lab; my chemicals and simulations don’t ask anything or critique the way I’m dressed. And I love watching Fitz build things.”

Bobbi smiled at her. “Yeah, I was like that too. Except outside the lab I mostly liked reading science fiction and fantasy novels and working out. Just an FYI, one science chick to another: don’t get engaged to the first reasonably good-looking person who proposes to you. In my case anyway mostly a disaster.”

“Oh, Dr Allen? He was a nasty piece of work.”

“True--though I suppose I got into SHIELD because of him and thus started down the long strange road that lead me to this little ‘A’ above my heart. So, all in all, worth it.”

Jemma trilled a laugh. “Oh, I shan’t have to worry about that I’m sure. No one’s going to propose to me!”

Bobbi gave her an odd look. “I have no idea why you’d think that, but okay.” 

The Avenger turned and looked out the uncovered window, smiling. “I always forget how green and beautiful this city is. So many parks and trees and boulevards. New York seems down right sterile in comparison.”

“Avengers Tower looks lovely though, all shining and modern, like a beacon of the future.”

“It’s a nice place to live. Hawkeye and I have the highest apartment, right near the top. It’s a little smaller than the others but we don’t need a lot of room; neither of us has much stuff. It’s called ‘The Nest’. It’s the first real home I’ve had since my parents died.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Jemma’s parents were still alive and her heart ached thinking of losing them even in passing.

“We weren’t close -- I was barely eighteen when they died in plane crash and I literally hadn’t seen them in person for over a year before that. Don’t look like that! Seriously, if you ran a ‘shitty childhood’ contest just with the Avengers Thor and I get knocked out first round. By the finals it turns into Black Widow vs Hawkeye and it’s not a pretty sight watching him go down in flames there.”

“You’re babbling to make me relax, aren’t you?”

“Little bit. Working?”

“Little bit. Though, why?”

“Oh, because the building’s about to go into lockdown because of the armed terrorists that just stormed the front entrance and I really rather you didn’t flip out.” 

Jemma gasped in horror. “What? If that’s a joke it’s not funny!” she snapped.

“Not a joke, sport.” Bobbi held her Starkphone up to the edge of the window, hit the camera button and the screen lit up, showing several large black cars pulled up at crazy angles at Mi-13’s innocuous looking front doors. Jemma saw a masked figure in black with a rifle run from one of the vehicles to under the overhang.

“My god, what are we going to do?” Jemma felt a surge of panic and controlled it rigidly. It helped that she was in the presence of the one person in the building she utterly trusted to deal with masked, armed, violent people.

The blackout on the window snapped down again and the door locked from the outside. 

Jemma watched Mockingbird--somehow she knew this was Mockingbird in the room now, friendly cheerful Bobbi subsumed into the Avenger utterly--pull out and check her weapons, one by one. She drew an automatic pistol from a back holster, popped the magazine and reset it then extended it to Jemma along with two more mags. Her face was very still and serious, looking regal and remote. Even her voice changed, dropped in register and slowed down. Jemma felt the low, even tone calm her even further.

“MI-13 still requires Science Section to qualify on these, right?” Mockingbird asked.

“Yes, but I’m not...I’m not a good shot.”

“That’s fine. Aim for the stomach, most people pull up when they fire. Use it at your discretion. You have fifteen rounds in each mag. Try to count them. When we step out of here, stay behind me. Don’t fire at anyone near me or in front of me unless I order it. If I go down or get tied up with assailants, leave me. Your first priority is to get out, get safe and give intell to Hunter and Braddock when they get back from the no-doubt distraction they were sent chasing. Remember, I’m a pretty big target for these kinds of people but I’m a visible and valuable one; they will nearly always want me alive. I can handle them if they don’t. My team will be here sharpish as soon as they get word so yes, the cavalry is on the way one way or another.”

With that she pulled out her Starkphone again, hit an app and took Jemma’s hand, pressing her fingertips to the screen before she could react. “Okay, you’re authorised to use the phone for the next twelve hours, if I throw it to you, grab it and book it out of the building. It’s recording everything it ‘sees’ as of this second so don’t worry about that.”

She placed it on the table and drew two fingers down from top to bottom,then moved them in a quick sharp pattern. The screen split and the top half resolved into a foreshortened shot of the interior of a small jet with a sandy haired man at the controls. Seated at his side was a man with dark skin and a friendly face. In the background, a tall figure in blue and a smaller dark-haired man sat playing chess.

The pilot looked up and his face broke into a wide smile.

“Hey, little bird, what’s up?”

The bottom half of the screen stayed blank but a voice spoke out of it. 

“That’s a little familiar Barton. Though, yes, Bob why are you suddenly talking to me now with the quinjet on the line? Trying to get in front of all this?”

“Get in front of what?” said Captain America from behind Hawkeye, his voice a combination of suspicious and tired.

“The MI-13 Headquarters was just attacked by a group of armed people. Went into full lock-down a minute ago.” Mockingbird spoke in that flat calm voice. Jemma blinked; it was as though a switch flipped in that cabin. Instantly all four men looked more alert, more dangerous, more intent.

Hunter swore sharply then his voice cut out. 

Without really reacting, Hawkeye leaned down and hit a series of buttons on the console in front of him. “Steve, permission to go super sonic?”

“Granted. Falcon, get on the air with Heathrow and tell them.” Steve moved into the camera frame more fully, looking stern. There was a shift in the camera; at the corner of the frame it was clear the quinjet was climbing into the upper atmosphere.

Hunter came back on. “Bob, we’re speeding back now; looks like this was a diversion. Confirmed we’ve lost contact with security on site. Sitrep?”

Mockingbird ran through what she’d seen in a few swift, almost incomprehensible sentences. Hunter swore again. Captain America nodded.

“Just you and this tech...Simmons is it?”

“Dr Simmons, Cap. Science Section. She’s armed.”

“Good, get her and yourself out if you can--”

The lights in the room cut out and flipped back on, now reddish and muted.

“Oh, dear,” murmured Jemma. “I don’t think we’ll be doing that now.”

“Dr Simmons, what does that mean?” Captain America asked her.

_Captain America asked her._

“Um, well, it means...it means that the sterile protocol has been activated. We have bio and weapons research labs here, it was intended as a last ditch if something happened in them. The whole building is locked from the outside -- the only way in and out will be the front doors and only once the initial lockdown has cycled through. Four hours from now.”

A countdown appeared in the bottom of the screen “4:00:00” and started to run down. 

“Mockingbird, get Dr Simmons somewhere safe and get closer to whomever this is. Find out what you can; throw a monkey wrench into whatever their plan is.”

Hunter spoke again, his voice cold and grim. “Permission to use lethal force, on my authority.”

“I’ve got a license to kill?” Mockingbird said brightly.

In the quinjet, Hawkeye barked a laugh. “Does that make me a Bond girl?”

“Zip it, you two,” Captain America snapped. 

Hawkeye looked into the camera and mouthed _No. Fun._

Despite the gravity of the situation, the impending violence, the fact that Fitz was downstairs in his lab and god knew what was happening to him, Jemma felt a little bubble of amused hope floating around in her head. This kind of thing was so routine to her companion and her teammates they _joked about_ over it.

And that was the moment someone outside in the corridor started to unlock the door.


	2. Hard bad choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay folks! 
> 
> Simmons and Mockingbird talk about life...and chemicals.

"Jemma, do you trust me?" Mockingbird said urgently. 

"Yes! Of course," Simmons gasped, listening to the complicated lock on the door being opened step by step. 

"Come here. The field might give you a headache but just...relax and try to breath quietly." 

Before she could do anything, Mockingbird spread her arms wide and engulfed the much smaller woman in her embrace, wrapping the edges of her trench coat around them both. Jemma found her back pressed up against a body like steel cables coated in foam, all soft yielding bits layered over top muscles that felt even stronger than they looked. 

There was a weird noise that she didn't quite hear and the world--what she could see of it through Mockingbird's coat--went hazy.

"What--" she gasped.

"Camotech. In my suit and coat. Hush. We are currently invisible."

The door slide open and admitted a lean man dressed in black, his face covered with a balaclava, a large automatic weapon in his hands. His eyes--the only part of his face visible--were light blue and cold, hard as diamonds. He scanned the room, taking slow careful steps as though he’d expected someone to be there. He methodically checked under the table, behind the fixed lectern, each corner of the room. Every time his eyes scanned past them they never paused.

They actually were invisible.

With a frustrated gesture, he turned to leave the room. 

Something hot and wet hit the top of Jemma’s face, dripped down and ran across her lips. She tasted the hot copper and salt of blood…

...and yelped involuntarily.

The next instant she was down on the floor and Mockingbird was leaping over her prone body to roundhouse kick the man in the stomach. She wrenched the gun out of his hand and slammed the butt into the side of his head. He went down and stayed there, unmoving.

Mockingbird--blood dripping from her nose--spun around and grabbed Jemma’s hand. “Come on..”

Jemma let herself be tugged into the corridor, then down the hall to a small maintenance office. Mockingbird shoved in inside after punching in a code on the door with trembling fingers.

“Bobbi, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know what was happening...um...what _is_ happening?”

“The camotech field gives me nosebleeds and eventually seizures after about fifteen minutes,” the Avenger said in a distracted voice. “Used to be about seven, we’ve been improving the technology.” She smiled at Jemma, wiping away the blood with the lining of her jacket. “It’s okay, m’lady. One down, lord knows how many to go. But, ummm, Jemma, I can’t...I can’t leave him behind us like that. You understand?”

“What do you mean? Oh, I...oh, I suppose. Must you?”

Mockingbird opened her hands. “Nature of this beast. Hard bad choices are de rigueur. I’ll be...right back.”

Jemma sat down and waited for the other woman to come back from committing cold-blooded murder. When Mockingbird showed back up, her face was drawn and pale.

“Jemma, I need to sit down a minute. This floor is still clear and we’ll be able to hear if anyone shows up. My back is a bit worse than I thought,” Bobbi said in a thin voice. She sat down on the floor, pressing her back into the wall and drawing her knees to her chest. There was a long moment of swirling silence between them, then the Avenger sighed and looked over at Simmons.

“I don’t enjoy it, okay? I’ve killed...a lot of people. Nearly always because they were trying to kill me first. But only nearly.”

“You’ve assassinated people?”

“Let’s not prevaricate, Jemma. I’ve murdered people. So has my husband and my best friend. Hell that was their job description: go forth and murder as Nick Fury bids you. Tony Stark was an arms dealer; Banner leveled Harlem. Thor has lead troops into battle; Falcon was a soldier. Captain America can--and has--punched men to death. In war, yes, but still...we’ve all killed. We try not to now and thank fuck none of us think it’s anything other than a last resort. But we kill when we must.”

“And this time you must?”

The older woman smiled sadly. “Yes. In my professional estimation this is that kind of situation. Hunter obviously agreed; you heard him. Are we right? Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe this is righteous, maybe it isn’t. It’s all messy and grey and slippery. All I know is that I have a mandate: to protect you, the rest of the staff and then the building.”

The silence lengthened again.

“There is,” Mockingbird said eventually, “this thing I do, when I’m not sure if I’m doing right. I ask myself: what would Captain America do? It is the great blessing of my life now, knowing that I follow someone who will never _order_ me to kill.” Her voice was soft and almost shy. “Please don’t tell him that. It wrecks the dynamic we have if he knows how much I admire him.”

“I suspect he already knows that. He seems a rather perceptive fellow.” Jemma said in a soft voice. “What little I know of him.”

“Yeah, but knowing it and having to hear it out loud are two different things. As it stands now he can pretend I just live to torment him...we should go now.”

“Go and do what?”

“Well, I’ve been asking myself this: if you have a sterile protocol on the labs in this building, then this one must have been activated by the labs in this building. I’d like to get somewhere safe and try and communicate with said labs. Someone down there is a smarty pants.”

“I’m fairly sure I know who it is,” Jemma responded.

The next floor down was mostly clear of armed men--Jemma followed Mockingbird like her shadow, trouble was avoided and they wound up in a small office that appeared disused. It had been rifled through, draws open and empty.

“Looking for something,” Bobbi muttered, then pulled out her Starkphone again, along with some cables and attached it to the hardwired internal networks. No wi-fi allowed here. She handed it over to Jemma.

“Why are you giving me this?”

“Cause you said you knew who activated the protocol. Call Fitz, Simmons.”

“How did you--”

“Condensing fact from the vapour of nuance is my job.”

“You are very cheeky.”

“It’s a gift.”

Jemma dialled Fitz’s cell and he answered before it rang. Bobbi tapped the speakerphone button--they were in an inner office with both doors shut and the volume down.

“Jemma, where are you? Please tell me you’re out of the building. Please tell me you’re safe.”

Mockingbird touched Jemma on the shoulder and shook her head. 

“I can’t tell you where I am, Fitz but I’m safe. I’m with someone who’s keeping me safe. You’re in the basement lab, right?”

“Nice,” whispered Mockingbird.

“Yes, I was just popping out to get some tea upstairs and these armed men ran in. They were blocking the front door so I ran back down and herded everyone into the secure area. With the sterile protocol, the blast doors activated so we’re safe at the moment. We can’t get out, but we’re safe.”

“Dr. Fitz, this is Mockingbird, I’m with the Avengers. How many staff do you have there, with you?” Bobbi broke in, her face blank, her eyes calculating.

“Avengers, bloody hell, Jemma what have you gotten yourself into?” Fitx yelped.

“Goodness me, Fitz, I suspect I’m the safest person in this building at the moment,” Jemma snapped firmly. “Answer the question.”

“Ummm...most of the lab crew...twenty four people, plus myself.”

“Nice work, Dr. Fitz. Beautifully done. There were only forty three staff on site after Hunter left--skelton crew, really. You’ve gotten more than half of them into a safe, secure location. Fucking genius, thank you.”

“How do you know how many staff--ah, yes, it’s your job.” Jemma said.

“Well, yes, it is,” Mockingbird replied defensively. 

“What are you two on about?” Fitz said, sounding bewildered. 

“Nothing, nothing. Dr. Fitz--”

“Just Fitz, please.”

“Fitz, you have a speciality in nano-tech and information systems, right?”

“I do.”

“Can you get me--well, my phone--access to the internal schematics of the building?”

“I...suspect so. But how do I know you are who you say you are? How do I know you’re not holding Simmons hostage?”

Mockingbird smiled broadly. “I love this guy, Jemma. Do you have some way of signalling each other you’re okay?”

Simmons cocked her head. “Not so much--we never planned for such a thing--but hold a moment...Fitz use this link to pull up the internal cameras, will you?”

There was a brief pause and the faceplate of the phone turned into a grainy red-lit video feed of a frightened young man with short curly hair crouched under a table. A smaller picture-in-picture showed a fishbowl view of the room Mockingbird and Simmons were in. 

Mockingbird waved at the camera.

“Check the database, that’s really and truly the Avenger Mockingbird with me.”

Fitz leaned out of view and then back in, nodding firmly. “So it is. What do we do now?”

“There are seventeen staff members left in the building. Can you show me where they likely were at the beginning of the event? Twenty minutes or so now,” Mockingbird said.

Fitz settled in with his tablet in his lap and tapped away. The screen of the smartphone turned into a wire frame schematic of the building. It showed a cluster of dots in the sub-sub-basement labs and then two dots on the second from the top floor, in the office area. Slowly, other dots propagated, mostly on the main level and the top basement.

“Fitz, how many men did you see?”

“I d’know, twenty maybe?” 

“Well, nineteen now I suppose,” Jemma murmured, glancing from the corner of her eye at Mockingbird, who shrugged.

“Right now, my priority is the staff. My team and your Directors are headed here post haste so we’ll have sufficient fire power to remove them from the building--and possibly life--soon enough. If we can get the remaining staff to a safe location. Is there any way to call them privately, even one at a time?”

“Just by their personal phones. Or if we knew what rooms they were in we could call those. But we don’t any more, do we?” Jemma said.

“No, we have to assume people have moved or been moved,” Mockingbird said with a nod. “What kind of protocols do you guys have for this sort of thing? What’s everyone taught in basic training?”

“Get behind locked doors if you can’t get out of the building. Don’t resist unless your life is in danger. Destroy on site data files and experimental results if compromised," Simmons reeled off.

"Excellent. Sensible. You're not combat staff. Right, this has just turned into hide and seek. I'll go out and hunt these guys down, one by one if I have to; you all stay safe." Mockingbird stood up and stretched. She was visibly less mobile on the left side and a micro-expression of pain slide across her face like lightening. 

Jemma felt a stab of worry. Hunter had told her to look after Mockingbird; as deadly and skilled as she was twenty to one was terrible odds. In an unfamiliar building against unfamiliar opponents who could use the remaining staff as hostages against her. She looked at Fitz and even through the terrible image on the camera she could see he was worried too.

And...and the terrible dark burden in her voice when she'd spoken of the people she'd had to kill wrenched at Jemma's heart. The Avengers literally bore the weight of the world on their shoulders; if she could do something to lighten the load for even one of them, it was a privilege.

"No, wait, listen," Jemma offered, desperately. "There's another way to deal with this...there is, right Fitz?"

Fitz's head went down and he started to mutter in that intense, distracted way he had when his already fearsome intellect kicked into over drive.

Mockingbird cocked her head like...well, like a bird...at Fitz. "He sounds like Banner and Stark when they're really cogitating."

"Jesus, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," Fitz burst out with a startled laugh.

"Leo, think now, thank the nice lady later," Jemma said firmly, her own thoughts zooming in circles at about light speed.

"I'll take the phone back, Jemma, but you can use the internal system to contact me if you think of anything. I presume Fitz here can keep you in the loop on your own phone, right?" Bobbi sounded distracted. As she spoke her hands were running through a deadly check list: guns, knives, tac suit, batons. With each syllable, friendly cheerful Bobbi moved further and further away and Mockingbird moved forward: taller, stronger, colder.

She smiled at Jemma gently, the way you smile at a precocious child and reached out to take the Starkphone back. Jemma felt like lighting something on fire to delay her---

"Fire suppression!" she yelped. "Fitz, you have access to the fire suppression systems from within the secure lab, right?"

Mockingbird had stopped moving and was looking at Jemma with a piercing intensity, waiting.

Fitz nodded. "Yes, the whole building I should think."

Jemma looked at Mockingbird. "They put in one of the new chemical fog systems. Harmless to humans and the lab equipment, smothers any open flames." She leaned over and wrote down a long, complex chemical formula on a notepad. "This is the base agent, the rest is non-reactive propellent."

Mockingbird leaned down and studied the formula, then took the pen and jotted down three more. "Which of those are they using the most of in the base mix?"

Jemma ticked number three. "And the second one as well but significantly less."

"We use this at the Tower, with a different ratio. Not sure what your point is here, Simmons, but go on..."

"Well, look. Put this together with this and add this as a reactant..." She scribbled a complex diagram of energy flow and quantum molecular bonding. "...and what comes out the other end is--"

"Mother fucking gods. That is...that's the most brilliant thing I've seen in...a long time. And I hang out with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner for fun." Mockingbird sat down in the chair at the desk and did her own set of calculations. "It's the dispersal that's going to be the problem, it'll dissipate fast. And we'd only get one shot at it, it'll clog the spray nozzles; significantly heavier than the regular fog."

Jemma grabbed the phone and panned it over the sheet. "Fitz, you need to work out how we get our additions into the fire suppression system. With a time table. A short time table."  
The feed from inside the lab went chaotic as Fitz scrambled over to a work station and started feverishly pulling up schematics and diagrams.

Simmons suppressed a bubbling laugh. "The maintenance room is on the main floor, so I suppose you'll still have an opportunity to take out some of the attackers on the way."

"Aw, what a treat. And then I'll have to lead the rest on a merry little chase. Which will leave you to actually trigger the system when it's time. You up to it?"

"Well, I rather have to be, don't I?"

Mockingbird and Simmons nodded at one another, united. Hopeful.

The Avenger reached out and held out one fist. "Science Sisters activate."

It sort of killed the moment when she had to explain to Simmons what a 'fist bump' was.


	3. Full-on Avenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all is revealed

They made it to the main floor relatively unscathed.

Mockingbird had literally put down two of the attackers on the way, one in the hallway and one in the stairwell. Both times she’d reacted to their presence and finished the men off before Jemma’s brain had processed what was happening. Both times, she’d winced in pain afterwards. 

After the second one, she remarked "Well, they must be aware of something going sideways for them at this point." They were moving slowly and methodically away from the unconscious man down the stairs, Mockingbird first in near total silence making Jemma feel like an elephant wearing wind chimes.

“Which is what we want, right?” Simmons asked, the gun in her hand heavier and heavier with each step. 

Without looking, Mockingbird said “Finger out of the trigger guard rookie,” then paused to listen at the next door. They inched past it, almost at the main floor, just a few steps left. Jemma guiltily laid her index finger along the body of the gun as she had been taught.

The door two levels above burst open with a sudden clamour of shouting men. 

“Well, that’s blown it, run for the room we marked,” Mockingbird said in a mild voice, then shot up the stairwell at the cloth covered faces peering down, making them scatter back from the edge of the railing. The noise of the gun was shockingly loud to Jemma but she kept her head enough to wrench the fire door at the bottom of the stairwell open.

Then she screamed because there were four men standing in the maintenance corridor pointing handguns at her. 

“Drop the gun!” one of them yelled, his voice rough and angry, with a Welsh accent. Jemma backpedaled frantically, tripped and fell into the refuge area just under the stairs. So she had an excellent if odd angle to watch Mockingbird go full-on Avenger a heartbeat later. 

It was clear that she’d been holding back earlier, the shocking speed and skill she’d exhibited like a slow beginner’s dance class. The door Jemma had wrenched open was just rebounding from the wall, the first of the four men moving into the frame as Mockingbird jumped backwards off the middle of the last steps, flipping in mid air. She landed directly in front of the first man, giving at the knees until one of them was resting on the floor. There was an arrested pause, as though everyone watching was too astonished to move. Then she uncoiled from her pose, striking the man’s arm from underneath with the butt end of her gun just as his went off. 

Jemma had no more coherent images from the next few seconds, merely a lung-stopping sensation of violent action so perfectly controlled it could start and stop on a dime. It was all fists; Mockingbird deployed no weapon, did not fire her gun. She spun out destruction behind her like a spider, like a storm. She blurred, literally, hands and feet so fast that the stories whispered around the teapot took on a new level of truth: _Mockingbird took out Brian Braddock, would have killed him but for Director Hunter. She could catch arrows mid-flight; dodge bullets. She fought Captain America hand to hand, no weapons...and won._

If this was a “human” Avenger, what must the “super” humans be capable of?

The fight ended, three bodies on the floor in poses of pain and Bobbi rising from another crouch to grab the last man by neck and...oh dear, crotch… _lifting him over her head and throwing him down the corridor._

“How did you--” Jemma gasped, scrambling to her feet, her eyes feeling like saucers.

“He was lighter than he looked. And I’ll pay for it when the adrenaline spike clears my blood stream so we do this _right god damn now, you hear me Fitz?_ ” That last was yelled into the air and the open cell phone tucked into an inner pocket of her coat.

“Yes,” Fitz yelled back, his voice strained and muffled through the cloth. “I’ll be ready when you get to the atrium...I think.”

“Well, that’s all I can expect,” Mockingbird said, laughing. Her speech was high and fast, manic. Like someone on a fresh bump of cocaine.

Above them, a clatter of feet as the followers took courage at the lack of bullets flying up at them. Jemma leapt forward, nearly vaulting the fallen men, just now groaning and twitching on the ground. Mockingbird yelled up the stairwell, taunting. 

Mocking.

“Come on, mother fuckers. One American chick shows up and you assholes are suddenly a Monty Python skit. Come on, bring all your little friends. Come and get me.” 

Just outside the door, she and Jemma exchanged a look and Jemma took off to the left, into a maintenance corridor. Two doors down and the electronic lock buzzed green; she shoved her way into a room full of pipes, valves and equipment. Her own smart phone was out of her pocket, showing multiple camera feeds from the bottom of the stairwell they had just left, the main atrium, the corridors leading there.

Mockingbird ran lightly down one of them, dodging past the man she’d thrown. Bodies poured out of the stairwell behind her, Jemma counting frantically. They’d accounted for seven already, four more behind her...three going down in the main elevator...two there, just coming into view running hard down an adjacent hallway to cut off the Avenger...four on the front door. Twenty. She paused but no more men appeared.

“Fitz, you were right. Twenty total. And--oh dear!”

“What, Jemma, what?”

Next to the four heavily armed men at the front doors, what looked like at least fifteen MI-13 staff were lying face down on the floor, their hands tied behind them. 

Mockingbird spun out of the access corridor to the right of the guards on the door, her flung batons preceding her like hunting birds. Two of the guards went down under them and a third on a rebound off the plate glass of the front wall. The last flung himself backwards at the door, slipped and fell so the baton missed him by sheer bad luck. 

The atrium was at least forty feet across. Mockingbird cross it in the blink of an eye, leaping high to spear a knee into the last man’s chest as he heaved to his feet. She landed next to him, watching to make sure he didn’t get up again, then turned to free the MI-13 people closest to her.

Armed men poured out of the corridors, weapons up and pointed at the Avenger in a lethal crossfire. 

Mockingbird straightened up, grinning, hands spread at hip level. One of the men stepped forward, gesticulating forcefully.

“Fitz, are you ready?” Jemma hissed urgently.

“Almost.”

“No, damn it. Now! Now!”

Mockingbird’s hands went up from her waist slowly, slowly.

Mockingly.

And then she was gone, like a heat mirage on a summer’s pavement. Every gun went up, trained at where she had been...

“Fitz!” Jemma screamed.

“Go! Go!” he screamed back.

Her hands snapped out, flipping switches and toggles, then spinning one valve wheel all the way open.

On the main floor of the building, the fire suppression systems activated, spewing a thick fog of chemicals into every room on the floor.

Where Mockingbird and Jemma had just drawn all the attackers.

Jemma’s formula, with Mockingbird’s input, had altered the system from a simply oxygen smothering chemical to an inhaled sedative. Unfortunately, it was also being emptied into the room she was in; the air filled with the smoky fog. It obscured the cameras but cut out after a few seconds as the system clogged. It would linger for about eight minutes before dissipating harmlessly. Jemma lay down on the floor, breathed deeply and fell into a peaceful dreamless sleep.  
*****  
_Eight Hours Later_

“Fitz, stop fussing at me,” Jemma said with some asperity, sitting up in the infirmary bed having just woken up from the gas. “I feel fine and I _will_ know where Bobbi is and if she’s okay.”

“Well, yes, she’s likely fine since she just called and asked us to both head down to the main meeting room in the secure basement when you woke up which I was about to tell you but apparently that’s ‘fussing’ now, so,” Fitz said in his ‘put upon’ voice.

Jemma smacked his knee and levered herself to her feet, tottering just a little. He grabbed her arm and she smiled at him with sheepish gratitude. “Yes, well, perhaps I’m not totally recovered but I can walk downstairs, I’m sure.” She looked down at the side table, gathering her phone and…

“Why is that here?” she asked Fitz. It was the gun Mockingbird had given her.

“You had it clutched in your hand when I found you. It seemed important.”

“I must have grabbed it just before I fell asleep.” She picked it up, keeping her finger out of the trigger guard, then held it down against her leg. “Well, I suppose I can return it to her now.”

“Gosh, I leave you alone with an Avenger for a few hours and you’re already turning into Mrs. Peel.” Fitz grinned at her.

“Lead on, Mr. Steed,” she grinned back.

They chatted a little on the brief walk, Fitz fascinated by Jemma’s description of Mockingbird’s fighting skills.

The secure meeting room had a catwalk/viewing area around the upper level where the entrance was, with broad stairs leading down to the large oval table in the center of the floor. The facing wall was a collection of screens that could all be set to different feeds. At the moment, it was only showing one image, across four screens: the atrium of the building as it filled with the chemical smoke. Bodies could be seen dropping to the floor through the fog and one figure in a long black coat striding confidently towards the front doors.

The table was packed. Mockingbird was standing at one end, leaning over a sandy haired man in a ratty t shirt who stared up at her, his hard features soft with worship. Next to Hawkeye--it must be Hawkeye--sat Captain America, his hair a bright halo of gold above his casual collared shirt of soft blue. He was turning to speak to the dark skinned Falcon, both soldiers looked relaxed and ready for anything. Dr. Banner sat quietly at the other end of the table, looking at something on his tablet. Directors Hunter and Braddock completed the other side along with another man Jemma didn’t know...or maybe she did. 

As she walked down the stairs, she stared at the last man, wondering why he looked familiar...and frightening to her. 

Everyone looked up as Fitz and Simmons took the last few steps, faces open and smiling for the most part.

And looking into the unknown man’s eyes, Jemma knew where she’d seen them before. Without thought, the handgun was up and leveled at his chest. 

“Hold!” yelled Mockingbird, arresting Captain America, Falcon and Hawkeye all already half out of their seats. “I warned you! Hold! And quiet!”

“Jemma what the hell?” Fitz gasped.

“Leo, shut up. It was you,” she snapped at the man sitting at the table. His face was plain and roughly featured, his eyes pale and cold as ice. She’d seen those eyes before, in the conference room on the top floor. Before Mockingbird had hammered him to the ground. He’d been one of the attackers. “It was you upstairs. But you should be dead, she said you were dead.”

“I didn’t actually. I implied it pretty hard but I never said I killed him, Jemma,” Bobbi--it was Bobbi now, clearly. Warm, friendly...suddenly sinister Bobbi who Jemma remembered was an expert liar, killer and double agent.

The gun swung up to point at the other woman, Jemma’s arms trembling as she backed up a few steps. Then it swung back to the man, her confusion transmitting itself to her body. 

The silence in the room had physical weight. Carefully, hands well out from her body (as if that mattered, Jemma had seen how fast she could move) Mockingbird walked around the end of the table to stand between the pale eyed man and Jemma’s gun. Her face was grave and serious. 

"Jemma, do you trust me?" she asked slowly.

"I...yes. Yes I do?" She did. God help her, she still did.

Mockingbird stepped backwards a pace, keeping the muzzle of the gun pointed directly at her chest. She was still well within lethal range. "Pull the trigger."

"No, I wouldn't...No!" Jemma yelped. But the gun did not drop nor her arms waver anymore.

"Jemma," Mockingbird said with a little smile. "Pull the trigger."

The sound of the handgun was softer than she remembered but it still made her ears ring. The gun kicked up in her hand; in front of her, Mockingbird bowed a little, from the waist as though ending a show.

Then the Avenger straightened up, still smiling. Uninjured. She reached out and gently took the gun out of Simmons’ hand. Beside her, Fitz made astonished inarticulate sounds. 

“Loaded with blanks, Jemma. That’s what I was doing for the last three days, making sure every scrap of ammo in this place was actually a blank.” 

“Bob, what if she’d reloaded?” Hunter said in a careful voice. Looking over at him, his face was white as a sheet.

“All the mags I handed her were blanks, she hasn’t left the building, she just woke up and also I am wearing body armour, I am not a moron.” Mockingbird retorted. 

At this point, Hawkeye literally fell off his chair laughing. He knelt on the floor, pointing at Hunter and Braddock and sobbing incoherently about “the looks on your faces!”. 

Jemma blinked around the room, noticing that all of the MI-13 people (including the man that she was sure Mockingbird had killed yesterday) were frozen in horror and the three seated Avengers ranged from amused (Banner) to delighted (Falcon) to fondly exasperated (Captain America). 

“Simmons, Fitz, the gentleman there is Joe Chapman, Union Jack, and the head of security for MI-13. As I suspect you have both figured out by now something is rotten here, right?”

“Yes, but we’re not in Denmark,” Fitz muttered.

“Take a seat, Mr. Fitz, Ms. Simmons,” said Captain America in that intoxicating deep smooth voice. “Clint, get a hold of yourself.” 

Hawkeye picked himself up and lounged back in his chair, snickering. Mockingbird walked over and leaned against the table next to him, still smiling at Jemma. She and Fitz gingerly took seats between Banner and Falcon, suspicions blooming on both their faces. 

Mockingbird picked up a remote and pointed it at the main screen. It changed to a feed of the interior of the meeting room from yesterday (by the time stamp), with Mockingbird just wrapping Jemma in her arms and them both disappearing from view.

“Good lord,” Fitz muttered. “Why are we not mass producing those suits?”

“‘Cause this one--the prototype--cost SHIELD sixty seven million bucks and caused fatal seizures in seventy five percent of the people who wore it. Which, okay, was three people. I was first and when it worked...ish...for me I think they got a little over confident with the whole thing.”

“Excellent reason,” Fitz said firmly.

On the screen, Mockingbird had just dropped the camotech field and downed...Union Jack?...then fled the room with Jemma. The time stamp fast forwarded to the door opening again and Mockingbird re-entering the room. An audio feed cut in.

_”Joe? Joe? You okay?”_

_The man on the floor sat up, rubbing his head._

_“You hit like a fucking Clydesdale, woman, but yeah, I’m fine.”_

_Mockingbird made an elaborate gesture of frustration._

_“You idiot why didn’t you just leave?”_

_“I thought you were fucking with me for fun. Hunter has mentioned your evil sense of humor.”_

_“Oh, god damn it...look, I’ve got Simmons with me now, I’ll try to ditch her and continue with the training plan if I can but if I can’t...your guys better be ready to improvise.”_

_The man pulled off his balaclava and grinned at her_

_“It’s better like that anyway. Test’s as much for them as the rest of the staff. Like to know how they do against an Avenger.”_

_“Expect ‘bout as well as you did, sport. See you on the other end of this.”_

Mockingbird froze the feed.

“So,” Jemma said slowly. “This whole event was an unscheduled drill? To test?”

“Crisis management by the operational and technical staff. It’s something the Avengers do for several agencies in the States, FBI, military and such,” Hunter supplied. “The attackers were all Security; the rest of them and our American colleagues were waiting with me nearby. Wasn’t actually going to leave the building undefended.”

“How did we do?” Fitz asked, a little anxiously. 

Jemma was still taking it all in. She suspected she should be angry--the whole situation had been terrifying--but instead she found herself a little...giddy. 

She had been horribly frightened. And it hadn’t mattered much, in the end. An Avenger had trusted her to have her back and she hadn’t failed. 

Captain America touched his own tablet and a number came up on the screen: 83.

“We score out of a hundred, on a scale that Black Widow, Doctor Banner, Falcon and Mockingbird worked out. This is the averaged score for the entire staff: very high, one of the highest we’ve ever seen. But this is the interesting part.” He smiled at them and Jemma felt her fluttering heart skip a few beats.

Two more numbers appear underneath the first: 92 and 95.

“Those are individual scores for two of the staff, the two highest we’ve ever given out.”

“They’re yours, Fitz, Simmons. In that order,” Braddock said, his voice filled with pride.

“You guys were amazing,” Falcon said, his face lighting up. “We were watching the whole time and it was like...man, nothing but net.”

“That formula you came up with,” said Dr Banner in his soft, gentle voice, “ was incredible and I very much want to have a long talk with you, Dr. Simmons. And exchange email addresses if nothing else.”

“Fitz, the only reason your score wasn’t equal to Simmons is the section on ‘Physical Confrontation’ -- you never really had a chance. Sorry about that,” Bobbi said apologetically.

“No, really, that’s just fine,” Fitz assured her. 

Hunter leaned back in his chair. “In any case, Fitz, Simmons, the end result is you were bloody brilliant and a credit to MI-13...now, piss off to America.”

“What?” they both exclaimed, staring at him in horror. 

Hawkeye started laughing again and Mockingbird punched him in the shoulder.

“He means, sports, that the payment for running this whole circus and depriving myself and Hawkeye of time together for weeks, the horror the horror, was two players-to-be-named-later. We picked you two.” She plopped herself down in Hawkeye’s lap with a satisfied smile, then winced as she twisted. Hawkeye face got worried and he leaned into her ear, muttering. She muttered back, reassuringly.

Captain America took pity on them, explaining. “We’re looking for a temporary secondment to Avengers Tower. To start sometime in the next year and last at least two years, although if it works out we’d probably want something semi-permanent. You’d have to shuttle back here periodically, to give reports and share information. We’d also be hosting other MI-13 agents and staff from time to time. In return, we’d provide access to our surveillance and logistics set up, as well as any personal training you desired. The Avengers have formally requested you two as our liaisons but it’s up to you entirely.”

He stood up and saluted them both. They leapt to their feet simultaneously, both shocked and uncomfortable. 

“Whatever you choose, Dr. Simmons, Dr. Fitz, it’s a pleasure and an honor to have seen you in action. You took out a building full of bad guys with minimal damage or risk to innocent lives. Exactly the kind of thing we need more of.” 

“Wha’d ya say, guys?” Hawkeye said from behind the Captain. “Wanna come play?’  
*****  
_Seven Months Later_

“Er, Jemma? This doesn't look like JFK?” Fitz said in a worried tone from his window seat in the private jet.

The pilot, close enough to hear him, answered. “Private Stark airfield, Dr. Fitz. We were requested to divert to here as we entered New York airspace.”

“Well, they must have a reason,” Jemma said, tentatively. “I rather hope it isn’t some new test or something, I’m too tired to handle it without crying.”

Once they had landed safely and disembarked with their luggage piled next to them, Jemma and Leo spotted the blond woman waving at them from the other runway. She sauntered over,grinning and pulled them both into bear hugs immediately.

“It’s great to see you guys,” Bobbi said joyfully. “The guys there--” she pointed at two big men standing next to a ‘Stark Enterprises’ van ”--will get your luggage to the Tower.”

“What about us?” Fitz asked, still worried.

“Well, we thought you’d enjoy the scenic route.” Bobbi pointed towards the horizon, to a sleek helicopter emblazoned with the Avengers logo that had just appeared. It landed close by, the wind kicking up Bobbi and Jemma’s hair. From the pilot’s seat, Hawkeye waved at them. 

Mockingbird took Jemma’s right hand and Leo’s left, squeezing them affectionately. “Welcome to the new world, guys. Let’s go have some fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a bit of a fake out but I wanted to write something a little more light hearted than my recent stories...and get Fitz Simmons to New York.
> 
> This serves for both. Hope you enjoy.


End file.
